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Palestinian refugees line up for food at Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, Syria.AP Images

With more than 200,000 killed and 9 million uprooted from their homes, the bloody conflict in Syria has been described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis since Rwanda. It is also the focal point for intense debates over chemical weapons, Islamic extremists like ISIS, and what the U.S. and others can do to stop the killing.

Hard choices require hard facts, which is why Belfer Center researchers created this “one-stop shop” for key facts, documents, statistics, and analysis. To learn more, click on one of the eight categories below:

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS

By Dennis Ross, International Council Member, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

It should come as no surprise that the Obama administration continues to wrestle with its approach to Syria. There are no good options in a war that has claimed 200,000 lives and displaced nearly 10 million people. The president is right to say that there are no magic solutions, yet he also clearly understands that avoidance is not an alternative if we are to achieve his declared objective of degrading and eventually destroying the Islamic State. Leaving the terrorist group with a haven in Syria ensures it both an ability to wreak havoc in Iraq and an operational space from which to plan, recruit and, in time, carry out attacks worldwide.

By Dennis Ross, International Council Member, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

We don’t have a strategy yet.” With those words, President Obama seems to have encapsulated everything that his critics have been alleging for months: that he’s improvising, halting and altogether slow to react to the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, the brutal terrorist group that has seized much of Iraq and Syria and on Tuesday claimed to have beheaded a second American journalist, Steven Sotloff. And certainly, the president’s detractors have pounced on his poorly chosen word

By Nicholas Burns, Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Politics, Harvard Kennedy School

The U.S. must act with much greater conviction to respond to the humanitarian meltdown in Syria. With more than 200,000 people dead and 11 million Syrians homeless--half the population--this is now in International Rescue Committee President David Miliband's words, "the greatest humanitarian crisis of the century."

What is needed? More cross-border aid to refugees trapped between a vicious Syrian government and rebel groups, pressure on Russia and China to support the relief effort, and expanded aid to reinforce neighboring Jordan and Lebanon. Professor Burns writes in his column, without decisive action, "Syria's civil war will almost certainly worsen as 2015 approaches."

In this installment of “Inside the Middle East: Q&A,” Ambassador Robert Ford, former United States Ambassador to Syria from 2011 to 2014 and Algeria from 2006 to 2008, discusses his experiences with the State Department in Iraq and Syria, US strategy in the Syrian Civil War, and Syria's future.

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

President Obama’s strategy to “degrade and ultimately destroy” ISIS has become the target of heated criticism, not only from partisan opponents but from many of his supporters as well. Categorically ruling out American boots on the ground, while subcontracting the bloody job of house-to-house fighting to the Iraqi military, Free Syrian Army, and Kurdish Peshmerga, can only assure failure, critics argue.

These assessments fall into a familiar trap: assuming that what has been announced is the sum of the matter. Especially for admirers of the diplomatic sleights of hand practiced by Henry Kissinger or Jim Baker, neglecting the obvious when assessing the current strategy is unfair.

With over 200,000 killed and 9 million uprooted from their homes, the bloody conflict in Syria has been described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis since Rwanda. It is also the focal point for intense debates over chemical weapons, Islamic extremists like ISIS, and what the U.S. and others can do to stop the killing. Hard choices require hard facts, which is why Belfer Center researchers created this “one-stop shop” for key facts, documents, statistics, and analysis.